


skeleton me; love, don't cry

by softshocks



Category: I.O.I (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, F/F, of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 17:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8854330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softshocks/pseuds/softshocks
Summary: Knowing human loss was part of the job, though that didn’t make it any less painful for her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nykteris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nykteris/gifts), [minkyebin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkyebin/gifts), [nachaeng](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachaeng/gifts).



> all aboard the angst train!!!!! My god this is probably the saddest thing I have ever written
> 
> For izzy and rina, and romy even if she doesn't go here (to sesom) but hey, the chungha cameo was dedicated to u

 

_ "It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but retire a little from sight and afterwards return again.” _

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

-

 

Human relations were none of her business, that was one thing the Maker told her.

_ Mortals will be petty, selfish beings, _ the Maker had said, the moment the breath of life made her flesh instead of clay.  _ You are Azrael. You shall collect them when they expire.  _

She was created the moment the Maker had discovered the concupiscence of mortals when the next of kin murdered his brother; his eyes held only jealousy, no compassion for his own flesh and blood. 

Collect mortals when they expire, she does. Delivers them to the realm of spirits, where they belong. It is a delicate process - the Maker had given her the power to be gentle. The hands of those in the last moments of their lives are held tenderly, tugging them away from consciousness. It is a painless process, after a painful, varying expanse of time. She escorts those remembered kindly into the hereafter, bright with lights and the spirits of those who have gone before them.

The treacherous ones - the ones remembered with hatred for their inaction - are always with her twin brother. Samael leashes them the moment they are dead, drags them somewhere that isn’t the hereafter, dark and endless and always hospitable to evil. 

She, between the two of them, has always been busier.

_ There is more Good than Evil,  _ the maker assures her,  _ you will see it in individuals. Their spirits glow brighter than the rest _ . 

 

-

 

Finding herself in the doctor’s office is far from a new experience. She has been alive for many millennia, found herself in the small huts of the village medics, in ambulances, in quiet homes where no one but she and the person there. 

She knows this girl,  _ knows everyone _ who walks the face of the earth and knows their time. The Maker had embedded it into her spirit the moment she was created. She knows this girl, knows that her name is Sejeong, knows that today she will learn that she has Pulmonary Fibrosis. 

She, however, is not aware of the blinding light that comes from Sejeong’s spirit the moment she steps in, worse for wear - with dark circles under her eyes and pale skin - but it is bright,  _ so very bright _ the room resembles the hereafter for a moment; She realizes she cannot look away. 

 

-

 

Staying away proved difficult, not with a light inside the girl’s chest enticing her to follow. She lingers in the room of Sejeong’s home, seated in various places, watching people pour in to visit Sejeong with flowers and food.

Sejeong is loved, very much so. The glimmer of her spirit only proves this further. 

She sees it, every day, the girl’s lungs only fade but the light in the center of them never does. 

The room is illuminated like the hereafter, and Azrael never wants to leave. 

 

\- 

 

She was given the ability to occupy mortal body, a temporary shell to communicate with mortals, and she’s never had any reason to use it. Communicating with mortals was walking on glass shards, forward and backward. 

(Azrael does not know what this feels like, though she  _ has _ fetched souls who have died from that.)

Mortals were afraid of things they do not understand, so speaking to them barely had any appeal to her. Thus, the a corporeal avatar was barely a necessity for her.

Until now. 

“Don’t think I don’t see you,” Sejeong says, on a rainy day where they’re holed up inside and Azrael had just come back from collecting a young woman, in the Netherlands, who had passed in a fire. There is a smile on Sejeong’s face, one of which Azrael had been extremely familiar with. It’s so easy for her to smile, even as she nears the brink of death. “You’re not very subtle.”

Azrael hides behind the curtain, more out of surprise than fear - because the angel of death does  _ not _ fear - while Sejeong keeps her eyes on the screen of her laptop.

This girl has a habit of surprising her. 

“I know who you are,” continues Sejeong, typing away, not a hint of fear in her voice.  Her voice is raspy, raspier than usual, and Azrael deduces that she’d just used her oxygen tank. “I just want to know the one who will take me when I’m gone.” 

The glow of Sejeong’s spirit calls to her, though what seals the deal is the absolute fearlessness of Azrael when nearly everyone cowered at the mention of what she does. So Azrael wills a mortal shell to come - a girl from the States, who had passed peacefully in her sleep on a trip with her father and her sister. She was young, fit, a taekwondo black belter at a young age. Azrael borrows her body. 

She doesn’t step out of the curtains, Sejeong’s back still turned to her. “At least tell me your name.” 

This is the first time Azrael has spoken in a hundred centuries. “You are not allowed to speak my name.” 

Sejeong finally turns to her, arm across the couch. “Oh. Sorry,” she does appear genuinely remorseful. “I’ll just… I’ll just call you  _ Cheonsa _ then.”

‘Angel’ in Korean. 

Azrael steps out from behind the curtains. Sejeong’s draw drops, more from awe than terror. “Oh… wow… you’re - you’re beautiful.”

Azrael almost scoffs. Sejeong, the mortal with the glimmering soul, unafraid of death and calling death beautiful.

 

-

 

“So, you’re here to take me when I die?” Sejeong says over a cup of coffee after pushing one across the table for her to drink. She sips it and falls into a coughing fit, blood into the crook of her elbows. 

Azrael nods, can’t look away from the glow of Sejeong’s spirit and the fading of her lungs. “Yes,” she says simply, because it was true.

“Oh. That’s cool.”

 

-

 

They fall into a small routine, and Azrael likes helping Sejeong out. 

Her sickness only debilitates the girl further and she’s rushed in and out of the hospital by Azrael. People who visit Sejeong are baffled by the mysterious girl named  _ Cheonsa _ , questions only shrugged off by Sejeong claiming that Azrael is her girlfriend. 

(“I hope you don’t mind my calling you my girlfriend,” Sejeong says once she’s about to sleep. She lets Azrael sleep beside her and the warmth of Sejeong is comforting, pulsing from the light inside her spirit. 

Azrael does not sleep, though she watches Sejeong’s shallow breathing in time with the beat of the light.)

 

-

 

“I can’t call you  _ Cheonsa  _ all the time,” Sejeong tells her as they’re seated at the dining table of Sejeong’s home. She coughs into her elbow and wipes off the blood splattered there. “I want to call you something that  _ you  _ want to be called.” 

Azrael can only laugh, one action which occurs often when she’s around Sejeong. “Give me ideas, then.”

“Hmm.  _ Cheonsa _ …  _ Cheonsa _ … what about something American?”

The look on her face must have shown displeasure because Sejeong shakes her head, grabs her laptop and types furiously. 

“What about  _ Saami _ ?” Sejeong looks up from her screen with wide, excited eyes. “It’s Hindi. Eminent. Exalted. High. Sublime. Do you like that?”

“It sounds like ‘Samil’. They call my brother that,” Azrael replies, shaking her head. “He… was good, even if he was good to me.”

Sejeong jumps in her seat in a burst of eagerness. “Oh! I know! What do you think of  _ Somi? _ It’s not exactly like your brother’s name but you did say that he was kind to you so I thought — ”

_ Somi.  _

The name resonates within her, striking a chord that makes symphonies reverberate through her mortal body and even her very soul. Sejeong has this large, expectant smile on her face. “It’s really nice; it sounds really soft. Tender. Gentle.” 

She suspects that Sejeong knows a little more about death than she ought to show. 

Azrael smiles, tests the name and rolls it around her mouth. It tastes delicious, the name Kim Sejeong has given Death. “I like it.”

_ Somi. _ She can feel the satisfied and approving nod of the Maker.

 

-

 

Human contact was something directly connected to the spirit, as Sejeong, the ever so lovely Sejeong, enjoys touch very much. 

It begins with small elbow touches that progressed to nights on the bed, where Somi holds Sejeong in her sleep while she remains awake, knowing full well that in a few hours Sejeong will sit up, coughing up blood into a small basin they keep by the bed.

Somi realizes that she likes human contact, wishes for a miniscule moment that she can trade living for eons for this small moment that make a mortal’s life worthwhile. 

 

-

 

Chungha buys Sejeong a dog, mostly just to cheer her up, now that she has a  _ girlfriend _ , Chungha says, eyeing Somi curiously, who can help clean up after the small yorkshire terrier that Sejeong names ‘Cheese’. 

Somi  _ knows _ that Chungha knows Sejeong’s time is almost up, giving her some of the few things before she passes. 

Somi  _ knows _ that Sejeong knows, too. 

 

-

 

It’s too much, truly, and she knows it might cost Somi her wings if the Maker deems it necessary. It’s too much, but when Sejeong leans in and kisses her, all she could do is kiss back and banish the thought that Sejeong is kissing Death, embodied.

 

-

 

Sejeong doesn’t get better, the sands of her time quickly running out. 

Somi knows this. 

 

-

 

The question comes anyway, when Somi least expects it. 

A lethargic afternoon, lying down, Sejeong’s warmth above her with Cheese snoozing on their legs. 

Somi has seen the coldest of nights on earth, has seen the way the Forgotten had drowned in the icy River of Neglect and she  _ knows, _ deep in her heart, that the warmth of Sejeong’s  _ everything _ _ — _ her body, her smile, her  _ spirit _ \--can turn tundras tropical and melt the icy body of water that trapped poor, frozen and forgotten souls. 

“What’s death like?”

Somi chuckles at that. “I’m not mortal, Sejeong. I wouldn’t know.” 

Sejeong appears genuinely afraid; Somi can feel her heart racing and her palms sweating under Somi’s shirt. Sejeong, who has never shown fear, not even the first time she saw Somi lurking at the corner of her room,  _ is afraid of death. _

The girl’s slender fingers curl into the material of her shirt. “But you’ve seen enough of it to at least have an idea. What’s it like, for the angel of Death herself?” 

Her heart softens at that. She knows many mortals wish to be in Sejeong’s place, asking the same question, and she realizes it’s infinitely better that it’s _ Sejeong _ who asked, not just any other mortal. Sejeong, with her kind smile and her heart of gold that shines bright and warm, so much so that Somi can’t look away. 

Dying a slow death has made Sejeong afraid of the process more than what comes after when her heart stops beating. 

Somi ponders, recalls millenniums of holding the hands of tender souls and leashing the necks of treacherous ones. She ponders, about seeing the melancholy in the eyes of those who loved the dying. She thinks of the fear that made their souls tremble at first, then the calm that overtakes them soon after.

“It’s like... how mortals go on  _ blind dates _ ,” begins Somi, combing her fingers in Sejeong’s chin-length hair, hoping it ebbs away some of Sejeong’s fear. “It resembles that. There’s the initial fear of meeting the other person, then the slight discomfort of actually meeting them, and then when you get used to their presence, it’s easier. That’s how blind dates go, am I correct?” She doesn’t really know  _ anything  _ about going on blind dates per se, but she’s observed enough humans to understand. 

Sejeong laughs and pokes her side, and Somi should have been offended, though she likes that the fear has subsided, replaced with Sejeong’s easy grin returning to her lovely face. “Yes, that’s how they work.”

“Do not laugh, that’s what I see.” Somi chides playfully, her tone turning serious, more quiet when she continues because she wants Sejeong to never fear death, not when she is lying on top of Death herself. “Death is a mystery to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Not even  _ I _ can ever tell you  _ exactly _ what it’s like.”

 

-

 

“You didn’t say you had a mortal form.” Sejeong says, one day, when Somi flips through the channels of the television.

She laughs. “It is not like it’s general knowledge that  _ Death _ can have a temporary shell.”

Sejeong echoes the laugh, though it’s smaller, weaker. “Temporary...”

 

-

 

There are always bad days, when Sejeong can barely stand and can barely breathe, that Somi watches over her the entire night - every breath a battle, every blood-stained cough a cracking of a gun. 

Somi says nothing, only kisses Sejeong’s forehead and whispers archaic words of comfort onto Sejeong’s skin, drowned out by the hum of Sejeong’s home oxygen tank.

 

-

 

“Promise me you’ll be with me when I go.” 

The request is quiet but Somi hears it, lets her insides echo with Sejeong’s request in the middle of the night, the steady beat of her monitor and the hum of the air conditioning unit the only sounds filling the room because Sejeong’s breath is too shallow for snoring like she did before. 

Somi doesn’t say that it’s her job to be there. Somi doesn’t say that she is  _ Azrael _ , that she has spent milleniums taking souls and bringing them to where they should be. 

What she does say is,  _ “Yes. Even after the end.” _

 

-

 

Sejeong is rushed to the hospital and Somi is there, every step of the way. She’s registered as Sejeong’s kin, and Somi barely leaves, only watches from the side of the bed as they hook Sejeong to the machines.

She had spent many millennia at the foot of the bed, observing the dying, and she feels her spirit being torn from the inside as Somi sits right beside it, for the first time since the beginning of time. 

Somi touches Sejeong’s hand. Loss nips at the heel of the angel of Death. 

 

-

 

Somi holds Sejeong’s hand — still but warm — and listens to her breathing — quiet, shaky. Her soul is bright and warm, that has not changed for sure.  

“Hey, when I go, can you have me cremated?” Sejeong asks, one night. There is no hint of fear, as if she had just ask a small favor of handing over salt. “I don’t want the services to be sad if I’m, like, right there.”

“Of course,” Somi says, because she can’t ever say no to Sejeong. 

Here, in the hospital bed, where Somi had stood countless times at the end as Azrael, ready to escort the soul away, she wishes she could give Sejeong life, instead of death.

 

-

 

“You’ll be there, right?” Sejeong asks, her hand on Somi’s face. There are so many IVs stuck to her skin. “That’s your job,” the girl laughs though it’s just a small exhale. “You’re supposed to be there.”

“Always,” Somi replies.  _ I have to be _ .  _ It is my duty. _ But Sejeong is far from a duty of hers, and she is rather there to escort Sejeong safely - even more safely than the others because this is Sejeong, with her pure heart that loves wholly.  

 

-

 

The day comes and Somi, as Azrael, is prepared. She had heard every drop of the grains of sand until the very last one and she knows it is time. 

The day comes and Somi, as  _ Somi _ , is barely prepared to see Sejeong so thin and so frail and dying. 

Somi holds her hand.

Azrael takes Sejeong to the hereafter. 

Then the warm light moves from Sejeong’s body to the palm of Azrael’s hand.

 

-

 

For the first time ever since her creation and the beginning of time, Azrael weeps.

Azrael weeps for one mortal named Kim Sejeong, with the brightest of spirits and the brightest of smiles.

 

-

 

She takes one last look around Sejeong’s room, without the girl and without the dog, emptied but full of memories.

The door, she remembers walking right into it while getting used to staying in her mortal form. Sejeong laughs and laughs and laughs (and coughs blood momentarily). 

The couch, where she and Sejeong have spent afternoons chasing after the other and basking in the warm sunlight from the blinds (which were gone).

Somi looks to the palm of her hand where she, Azrael, held Sejeong’s glowing spirit with utmost care.

 

-

 

Sejeong is loved and Sejeong is remembered so fondly. Somi attends the services and the guests never stop pouring in. The room is always bright with Sejeong’s spirit, with people’s love for Sejeong - and she is loved, so very loved, that Somi doesn’t worry about Sejeong in the hereafter for those remembered kindly. 

It is impossible to have not loved Sejeong. She knows for sure that she, too, loved Sejeong just as much. The warmth of her spirit pulsing at the palm of her hand, still. 

 

-

 

Azrael comes to the hereafter, as always, to deliver. 

What she does not expect is the familiar warmth and the glowing presence of one Kim Sejeong. 

Sejeong had always been one to surprise her.

“Well,  _ Cheonsa, _ you took forever.”

She is greeted by Sejeong’s smile, blinding just like her spirit. She is no longer deathly pale, no longer lanky, no longer attached to medical instruments at every crook of her body. 

“I apologize,” She replies, feels the pulse of Sejeong’s spirit at the palm of her hand which echoes the girl right in front of her. “I  _ am _ here, though.”

It’s poor comfort, but the Angel of Death has never been expected to be the best in consolation. 

Though the large smile on Sejeong’s face and the glow from within that make her shine brighter than any other spirit Azrael has ever seen tells her that Sejeong doesn’t mind at all.

**Author's Note:**

> TBF I DONT KNOW WHAT THIS IS BECAUSE???? i don't know exactly how sesom works i feel like this would have worked better if somi were thanatos but then i already had things drafted and i became lazy
> 
> this is mostly of jewish origin? i love angels 
> 
> also i love this beacause sejeong is so good and pure


End file.
